Who the hell is this guy? This might help (wikipedia).  Don’t worry, I’ll wait until you get up to speed.

I had never heard of him until today when I read an entry over at geekinheels. The author there posted a quick little article about how she found a neat little web app that analyzes a sample of text and tells you what famous author you most write like. When she did it with her blog entries, it spat out Stephen King most often. This is what I got more than 50% of the time:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I got a smattering of others, but apparently this David Foster Wallace character was quite influential. I feel like reading his stuff, but it might be kind of like masturbation at this point. Like discovering you’re actually a clone, finding your seed person, and making out with them or something.

Wait, what?

Homer Simpson Clone A: I love you Homer.
Homer Simpson Clone B: No, I love you, Homer.

The Kindle from Amazon is a super-cool device and I want one simply because it’s a gadget. For now, I’ve got my iPod Touch though and that’s good enough for me (so no, Ame I don’t really want one!). Also, I say Kindle, but I really mean all e-book reader devices. The portability is amazing, and, I know I hate the environment, but the paper-savings are enormous (a quick sidebar though – for all the R&D placed into the Kindle, is there really a net-gain?).

I’ve not used or even seen a Kindle in person, so all I have to go on are reviews and hearsay, but I hear the display technology is what puts it over the top: it looks and receives light like real paper with real ink on it. The only problem is there’s one page and, for all intents and purposes, nailed to the device.

The device I want is very simple to imagine. In short, it is the only book you will ever own. For the purposes of this discussion, I will describe my favorite book and backtrack later – it’ll make more sense this way, I promise.

Imagine a nice-sized hardcover book at about 250 pages – not too thick, not too daunting, but just right. Each of these pages is a double-sided version of the Kindle’s superpaper technology and looks, feels, bends, and even smells exactly like paper (extra credit for bits of pulp thrown in). You can start any book you like on page one, and flip through to the end on page 250 without pushing a single button.

Well, not quite no buttons, but close. You can select which book you want to read, by using the touch interface on the front cover. To keep the aesthetic value of this book high, no touch-screens as we know them like on an iPod, but an optical projection with adequate sensors to detect what choices  are made (very much like those laser projected keyboards out there). Storing text is trivial and flash memory is ridiculously cheap and falling dramatically on top of it, so space for books is effectively unlimited.

Some questions immediately arise though. First, what if the book you want to read is not exactly 250 pages? The weasel answer is of course, “it’s up to you,” but there are some options: Have the book’s software typeset the text for you; shrink or enlarge the text to fit the space; or if there’s more than 250 pages in the book and you reach the end, place a bookmark and simply close and re-open the book to an earlier physical page and resume reading (which leads into the next point, even).

Physical bookmarks are problematic. If the text of the book can fit in those 250 pages and that is the only text you read, then a bookmark will suit you fine. You can place a bookmark, close the book, and resume reading later – just like a low-tech book today. If you change texts, the bookmark will be on the wrong page – or will it? Again, options: Changing texts when a physical bookmark is present will simply move the words to accommodate the bookmark, so when the book is opened, the last page you were on (or even the first page, if you never opened it before) will show; Ignore the bookmark and display the text to whatever page is opened – this seems a more likely and elegant solution. To elaborate on this second point, the book likely doesn’t care where you put a bookmark – it has no way of knowing what a physical bookmark is. What the book does know is on what page you were last. I submit that is all that matters to the reader; picking up where you left off.

That’s just my book though. Yours might be a paperback, or be like an unabridged War and Peace. The number of pages doesn’t even matter – it could be as few as one or as many as 10,000. The important part is there should be pages you can turn and touch. The interface and storage don’t necessarily have to be in the book itself, but certainly helps for portability. One possible scenario is the book has no interface or long-term storage, but simply an antenna with which to receive the appropriate data.

I said it would be the only book you will ever own, but really, where’s the fun in that? Sometimes you want a large hardcover, other times a magazine format. Maybe you want to scatter your house with them so you can pick up and read wherever you are. Portability is a selling point to be sure, but hey, “what if?”

I’ll leave marketing departments and focus groups to the name of this device, and you know it’ll be something stupid like Kindle. Yes, I said it. The name Kindle is terrible. You’re Amazon of all things! You’re named for a rainforest! Pick a tree that grows in the Amazon Rainforest and make sure you pick a cool sounding one! That’s enough rant for now, but I want my damn book!

My Watchmen experience has come to a close, and what now? I don’t want to reveal the plot or the ending or anything, so it makes it a bit hard to really talk about. Number one: I recommend it. It’s a quick read, and just so you can gauge for yourself, it took me about 7-10 hours to complete it and I’m a slow reader. The protagonists are engaging, and, just like everyone else I’m sure, my favorite character is Rorschach.

Rorschach is popular because he’s one of the three really developed characters. Nite Owl is realistic in that he’s an aged masked-vigilante, and having a bit of a mid-life crisis. And then there’s the chick – I guess that really speaks to how great I thought she was, eh? But Rorschach is a man of action, and while we can sympathize with Nite Owl and his problems on a more human level, we want to root for the hero who can (or tries to) get things done! The other characters don’t really seem that involved or important.

One thing I really love about the setting, is the “norm” is there are no heroes with super-powers save for Dr. Manhattan, who, funny enough, suffered a super-science accident to get his powers. The heroes are simply people with their own agendas and problems. Again, I don’t want to reveal anything, you’ll just have to see what’s under the hood (hah!) for these folks.

I’ve got a major gripe about a part of the book’s presentation though. At the end of each chapter, there’s a bit of extra “world-building” thrown in. It could be an excerpt of a character’s autobiography, a news clipping, or a journal. I tried reading them, but these sections seemed to get in the way. After the first couple of these, I outright skipped them. Honestly,  I skimmed a couple of them, and if a phrase looked interested, I looked a little harder, but for the most part, it was boring. I imagine there were complicated back-stories for all the characters, and, rather than fully developing them for a graphic format, the authors went for the “brick of text” approach. Yawn.

In contrast, I would, however, love to see the adventures the characters allude to in their eariler days. I guess that’s what I love about The Venture Bros.. Much of its meaningful story-telling narrative is in flashback. Some are put-off by this, and I can understand completely, but what I believe they’re missing is the presentation is internally consistent: moving pictures, action, and dialogue. Watchmen is not consistent in this regard, and the curve-ball is not appreciated.

The story as a whole is quite good, the plot is well-laid out, and the ending has a nice twist if a little… odd.

Milhouse: When are they gonna get to the fireworks factory?

The Watchmen movie is supposed to be coming in 2009, so I picked up a copy of the graphic novel and have started into it. I’m not too far into the story, but it is very well done. When I first started it, I thought it was good, but I’d seen better: Fables came immediately to mind.

Bobby: if doc manhattin isnt nude in the movie im boycotting it
Bobby: >: |
Bobby: ill have a little sign
Steneub: like a no smoking sign, with a penis instead of a cigarette, INSIDE of a similar symbol – to show you’re against the banning of penises

Of course he’s kidding, but Dr. Manhattan is a blue energy man and he walks around naked (That’s not a spoiler – this happens in the first couple issues), and well, you see cock and balls. It’s not gratuitous and it’s makes perfect sense to see block and tackle there; one is simply used to censorship or to have it obscured or just out of frame.

I know pretty much nothing about Watchmen other than what I’ve read so far. It’s very good, and I want to see where it goes. I’ll probably have a 23 year-old late review posted when I’m done!

Not really, but I needed a title for this article. Ame and I were talking recently and Lord Byron came up. I know very little about literature, let alone English Literature. I likes my grammar the ways I likes it, but when it gets into famous people, I stumble hard. Hell, even Shakespeare and Poe are out of reach for me. I do like The Raven though.

Anyway, I mentioned my favorite Lord Byron quote:

“Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; men love in haste but they detest at leisure.”

It’s cool, right? Ame told me that Lord Byron wrote his stuff as a sort of “Punk’d!” to the masses who take literature seriously, sort of like a, “Hah! I’m writing this crap, and you think it’s gold! Punk’d!” I tend to take what Ame says about literature as gospel; like I said before, it’s her bread ‘n butter and it was her major in college. So, those who know what Byron’s motivations were, can feel superior just as he to all the mouth-breathers of the world. I know I’m not, but I still can’t but help feel judged by a dead man. I like Bryon, dammit!

Why can’t something, even if intended as tripe, be good?

One interpretation of mine is Bryon was a narcissist and, to him, everything Byron was amazing. Byron was also smart, so he declared to at least one colleague what he was “really” doing, which was making crap for the masses to enjoy. Byron did his Byron thing, and people loved him. He sneered at their ignorance and smiled at his brilliance in manipulating the fools.

Or… Byron was insecure, but still a good wordsmith. He Byron’d it up and just said it was bad. When you set your expectations low and succeed, what a nice surprise!

Or! As a spin on the first hypothesis, he was aware of this possible interpretation and manipulated the world as one of the first, if not the first, post-modern poets. A meta-poet.

At the very least, two things: Byron is smart and dead (joke’s on him!); and it still doesn’t answer my question: If something meant to be bad is good, is it still good?

I say yes. Why attribute malevolence or benevolence to anything created? Why does it need that attribute? Would you hate a beautiful work of art if it were later discovered to be created by a pus-covered mud-man? Of course not. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not the creator. So what if Byron crafted his works to laugh at us? They still evoke emotions and it only makes him a gigantic asshole, no matter how brilliant or narcissistic.

Beholder, Grade 11 Beaurecrat: “Please don’t tell my supervisor I was sleeping!”